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Doctorow, Cory

"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom"


"Thanks," she said, laconically. "It was a team effort." She hugged her
cronies to her, almost knocking their heads together.
Lil said, "What's your timeline, then?"
Debra started unreeling a long spiel about critical paths, milestones,
requirements meetings, and I tuned her out. Ad-hocs were crazy for that
process stuff. I stared at my feet, at the floorboards, and realized
that they weren't floorboards at all, but faux-finish painted over a
copper mesh -- a Faraday cage. That's why the HERF gun hadn't done
anything; that's why they'd been so casual about working with the
shielding off their computers. With my eye, I followed the copper
shielding around the entire stage and up the walls, where it disappeared
into the ceiling. Once again, I was struck by the evolvedness of Debra's
ad-hocs, how their trial by fire in China had armored them against the
kind of bush-league jiggery-pokery that the fuzzy bunnies in Florida --
myself included -- came up with.
For instance, I didn't think there was a single castmember in the Park
outside of Deb's clique with the stones to stage an assassination.


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